Posted on 06/10/2005 2:49:33 AM PDT by andie74
HAMILTON, United States (AFP) - Shackled to four prisoners by a long steel chain, Harley Grimes is smiling as he shuffles down the road in his black and white striped uniform.
Huge trucks zoom within inches of his outstretched arm as he uses a long plastic grabber to pick up trash and drop it into a bag. But Grimes does not mind.
"I haven't seen the sun for nine months," said Grimes, who is 25 and serving a one year sentence for receiving stolen property. "This is a lot better than what I've been doing."
Grimes is one of 40 prisoners at the Butler County, Ohio, jail who volunteered to work on the new chain gang. The project was started in May by Sheriff Richard Jones, who hopes to make prisoners' lives a little less comfortable.
"I don't care if they don't like it," Jones said. "I want them leaving here saying that the food is bad, the beds are uncomfortable, and they work your ass off."
Jones has received congratulatory phone calls and e-mails from as far away as Italy and Australia. Even civil rights groups say there is nothing inherently wrong with the project.
"He seems to be treating the prisoners well," said Chris Link, director of the Ohio Civil Liberties Union.
On a beautiful spring day, with a light breeze blowing, working on a chain gang seems more like a surreal vacation than an extra punishment.
The four-lane highway cuts through the northern suburbs of Cincinnati, and it is lined on both sides by enormous new homes. Looking up the prisoners see lawns of recently-laid sod, many filled with swing sets and plastic toys. Occasionally a motorist passes by, honks the horn and sticks a thumbs-up sign out the window. By the second day, the prisoners hardly notice.
They wear black-and-white striped uniforms, just like prisoners in old black-and-white movies. They also wear baseball hats, but nobody uses his cap to hide his face.
"I'm not embarrassed," said Delmer Vickers, 41, who is serving nine months for not paying child support. "All my relatives already know about it. They seen it on the TV last week."
Slowly the inmates fill their trash bags with Wendy's Frosty cups and cigarette butts, roofing tiles and soda bottles, McDonald's wrappers, chicken bones and long strips of aluminum siding.
Forward movement is slow. One prisoner stops to kick his black military boots against a piece of aluminum foil embedded in the dirt. Occasionally the chain catches on the weeds, causing a man to stumble. No one gripes about the delays.
"Ain't no use in going fast," Grimes said. "I got three more months to go."
Surrounded by hurried homebuilders and speeding motorists, the inmates are the only people in this windswept place who feel no need to rush.
There hasn't been a chain gang in Ohio for over 50 years, but images of the gangs remain ingrained in the public consciousness. From the 1870s through the 1950s, prison chain gangs in the United States built highways and railroads through the summer heat and bitter winter cold. The practice died out in the 1950s and 1960s, after news reports documented widespread prisoner abuse.
But chain gangs are making a comeback. Joe Arpaio, the sheriff in Phoenix, Arizona, created the nation's first modern chain gang in the late 1990s.
Back when he was working on construction projects in Phoenix, prisoner Delmer Vickers drove past chain gangs on the freeway. He supported the idea then. Now that he is on a chain gang himself, he still does.
"This helps make the time go faster," said Vickers, who works as a drywall finisher on new houses. "Besides, this work is easier than my day job."
Sounds like China?
/Christian Fathers?
?....Sounds like Soviet Union style,... 'Free-Speech'...according to their Soviet legal constitutional dictatorship?
/Gulag freedom?
GOOD !!
It should make a comeback in all 50 states! There's a lot of debris along all the roadways in this country.
Re #2 & #3:
Can you be a little clearer? Are you for chain gangs or against them? Hard to tell from what you wrote.
We have all seen the Chain gang movies, and none of us wish to see sweat boxes and beatings. That said there is no harm in making a prisoner work for his sustenance.
bout time....
Alabama reinstated the chain gangs back in the 90's. People loved it until the prison commissioner decided women chain gangs would be a good idea as well. The feminists came out of the woodwork then! They didn't care so much for equality then. And so the whole program had to be abandoned. It was quite sickening.
"I don't care if they don't like it," Jones said. "I want them leaving here saying that the food is bad, the beds are uncomfortable, and they work your ass off."
It's about damn time somebody started thinking this way. Jail has become club med for murderers, rapest and child molestors.
I'm not surprised the prisoners are enjoying the work...it goes without saying....idle hands, idle mind.
Our county jail inmates have been picking up trash here in the Northeast for as long as I can remember. They do a pretty good job.
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